STYLE AND CULTURE

2017'S MOST STYLISH FILMS

By Chris Sayer, December 24, 2017

From timeless, traditional Brit tailoring to the not-so-distant future of fashion, behold five of the finest fashion-heavy flicks that filled our eyes with stylish inspiration in 2017, as we filled our faces with buckets of popcorn.

Picture: Sony Pictures, available to own on DVD now

Baby Driver
You don’t need a PhD in fashion to work out how Ansel Elgort looked so damn fly in Baby Driver, but a degree in film studies might help. Baby crashed the influence of three asphalt-scorching motor movie icons into one hella-hot look behind the wheel — the plain tee that’s historically synonymous with James Dean, Steve McQueen's approach to essential eyewear, and a varsity version of the bomber jacket we saw in the driving seat of Ryan Gosling's Drive. Crank up the film’s incredible soundtrack as you smash them into one and you’ve got what has to be the ultimate driving ‘fit, and one of the most memorable on-screen styles of the year.

Picture: Amazon Studios

Manchester By The Sea
Got you *right there* didn’t it. A real kick in the feels. The grief-stricken masterpiece, in which a man is entrusted with the care for his dead brother’s son, required us all to have some pretty thick skin to survive it without, y’know, getting something in our eye. Thicker even, than the awesome American workwear Lee Chandler was repping throughout this emotional rollercoaster. Hardy, functional and of the highest quality, it had us reaching for outdoor staples like Filson, Carhartt, and even Barbour, which all tapped into our appetite for rugged-yet-refined outerwear in 2017.

Picture: Warner Bros

Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve took on a heck of a challenge when he decided to dig into the Blade Runner universe, not least with predicting what we’ll all be looking like and wearing 32 years from now. Well, friends, we’ve seen the future, and it looks… like an epic and on-point lookbook from 2017. We saw some truly incredible shearling action courtesy of The Gos. We saw mid-length locks — a fall fave — and a trailblazing kimono à la Cos and The Kooples on Jared Leto. We even saw Harrison Ford’s Deckard rocking the biggest tone of the year, a militant moss green, from his sun-scorched casino fortress. The future’s bright, alright.

Picture: 20th Century Fox, available on digital download on 13 January and on Blu-ray and DVD on 29 January

Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Take five minutes, and try and think of a film genre that’s done more for menswear than the great British spy movie. Can’t, can ya. Of course a certain Bond, James Bond can take a lot of the credit thanks to his slick '60s and '70s secret service suiting. But although you could argue that Kingsman is kinda clinging to 007’s coattails, you can’t deny its impact on the style landscape in 2017, with the release of its second movie, The Golden Circle. All the classics were there — double-breasted and beautifully fitting suits on Taron Egerton, heritage patterns on Mark Strong — but it was the curveballs that had us thinking Bond might have met his sartorial match at long last, not least with Colin Firth’s shearling jacket and pinstripe suit combo and Pedro Pascal’s alpine cowboy snow gear.

Picture: Sony Pictures

Call Me By Your Name
When it was released almost 20 years ago, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley became the new handbook for nailing Riviera style. Anyone looking for guidance in the Out-Of-OfficeIvy League look needn’t search any further than Jude Law and Matt Damon’s sun-kissed, disaster-destined characters with their short shorts, luxe polos, jet-set haircuts, espadrilles and deep tan bods. And that’s how it stayed… until this year. Timeless, preppy summerwear was the order of the day in drama Call Me By Your Name, too, with a truly inspiring coming-of-age storyline helped along by the sort of nautical polos, classic Italian eyewear, athletic shorts and unbuttoned Oxfords that’d stoke the deadly jealously in Tom Ripley all over again.